Category: Commercial

Caledonian Building (1874)

by Dan//Commercial, Holyoke, Organizations, Second Empire

The Caledonian Building, located at 185-193 High Street in Holyoke, was built in 1874 as the Crafts Block by Roswell P. Crafts, a businessman who served as mayor of Holyoke. The eclectic building combines a French Second Empire Mansard roof, two floors fronted in brownstone and a ground level that utilizes cast iron pieces purchased from the Architectural Iron Works of New York. Starting in 1879, the Caledonian Benefit Club, a group of Scots immigrants, used the building’s fourth-floor concert hall for their meetings. In 1907, the Club purchased the building from the Crafts estate.

Buschmann’s Block (1873)

by Dan//Commercial, Second Empire, Westfield

John C. Buschmann emigrated from Germany to the United States in 1852 and moved from Feeding Hills to Westfield in 1857. He established a wholesale tobacco business in 1860 and soon built the Railroad House Hotel (later replaced by the Bismarck Hotel) in Depot Square in Westfield. In 1873, he built Buschmann’s Block at 36 Union Avenue in Dept Square. He used the building as a warehouse and offices for his tobacco and other businesses, which included coal, wood and ice. Buschmann’s Block later became a whip manufacturing plant, a furniture store and then a flower shop. In 1995, the building became home to Pilgrim Candle, which expanded to include the Bismarck Hotel building next door in 2001.

Ball Block (1898)

by Dan//Commercial, Holyoke, Neoclassical

The building pictured above is at 225 High Street in Holyoke, diagonally across the street from city hall. It was built in 1898 and known as the Ball Block (or Realty Building). It was later altered on its lower levels to become the Holyoke National Bank Building. Recently renovated (and winning a Preservation Award from the Massachusetts Historical Commission in 2005) the building is now known as the Latino Professional Building.

Merchants’ Row, Amherst (1880)

by Dan//Amherst, Commercial, Renaissance Revival

On July 4, 1879, a line of buildings on South Pleasant Street comprising Merchants’s Row in downtown Amherst were all destroyed in a fire. According to The History of Amherst (1896), compiled by Carpenter & Morehouse,

The fire started in a shed in the rear of George Cutler’s store. It communicated quickly to the barns of Stebbins’ livery stable, and thence to the Amherst house. These buildings were all burned, together with the Savings bank block, Charles Adams’ block and the stores of O. G. Couch, J. H. Starbuck, Edwin Nelson, George Cutler and B. F. Kendrick. The origin of the fire was unknown. The loss was between $50,000 and $90,000, largely covered by insurance.

The new Merchants’ Row, completed in 1880, was built on part of the site of the lost buildings.